Does someone have good evidence or a book maybe that debunks these theories that want Jesus lost years that arent recorded to be something that diacredits the bible? From what ive seen these theories doesnt have really any historical basis but neither do we to counter them since we dont have any historical records from Jesus earliest years. So any clue here? Thanks for the responses
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No counter is necessary or possible Nick. Those who have to believe such unreason cannot be helped. It’s not their fault. Walk away mate, they’re tar babies.
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As any Jewish rabbi will tell you, the teachings of Jesus were almost completely the same as the Pharisees and rabbinical Judaism. The only difference was a rejection of the puritanical ideas whereby the rabbis kept themselves apart from sinners and Gentiles to avoid becoming “unclean” and thus unworthy of being in the presence of God. Nothing from Jesus shows any exposure to the religious ideas of India. This is nothing but a fabrication for the purpose of forcing such ideas into the text for which there is no justification in the text itself.
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We know that early Christians seemed interested in “filling in the gaps” about Jesus’ early life, because several early non-canonical manuscripts (e.g. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and The Proto-Gospel of James) enthusiastically offer narratives that “explain” what Jesus’ miracle-working talents looked like when he was an infant and child. These infancy gospels didn’t make the cut when later Christian theologians made decisions about which popular texts to include in the New Testament canon. But we still have copies of some of the infancy gospels, and they do remind us of the natural human impulse to want to know more about the people we admire, even if we have to make up the stories ourselves. (It’s a bit like the widespread phenomenon seen in today’s fandom, where people love to write “the further adventures” of beloved characters from favourite TV shows and films.)
The good news, I suppose, is that these early Christian infancy gospels use imagery and themes that are recognizable to us from the canonical gospels – so nothing to suggest early Christians believed Jesus went to faraway lands to learn how to work miracles. (I’m not so sure the same can be said about Paul, though, because he tells us in Galatians 1 that, after his revelation of Christ, he didn’t confer with anyone else, but instead went away at once into Arabia and eventually returned to Damascus (though it’s unclear why he went to Arabia or how long he was there)). So if you want to blame anyone for starting rumours about the efficacy of secret travels, blame Paul.
I think it’s worth noting that if one wants to know about Jesus’ birth and early life, the Bible itself isn’t very helpful. We have nothing at all from Paul about the historical Jesus himself (only bits and pieces about Jesus’ later friends and family in Jerusalem) so there’s no point looking for biblical help there. John has no information about Jesus’ early life (though apparently Jesus’ origin was “known” (John 7), nor does Mark tell us anything specific (though one can infer some specifics based on Jesus’ adult relationships and knowledge in John and Mark). Meanwhile, Matthew and Luke, both of whom apparently felt that Mark’s narrative was seriously lacking in suitable prophetic justifications, added early life narratives that differ from each other in significant ways. (Biblical scholars have examined all these differences in some detail, so it’s easy to find reputable sources that show the many differences between Matthew and Luke.)
So with all this confusion about the historical facts of Jesus’ early life, it’s easy to see why people have felt at liberty since the very early decades of Christianity to make up stuff that at least adds a sense of appropriate mystery if not a record of historical fact.
I do like the parts in Matthew and Luke about angels, though. When I put up my Christmas tree yesterday, I put lots of angels on it.
Are you talking about the geneology part of these?
Not specifically, no. I talking about the the account of Jesus’ birth and early life in Matthew starting from 1:1 and concluding at 2:23, which includes the genealogy but also the story about the flight into Egypt and the return. In Luke, the account of Jesus’ birth and early life is much longer (Luke 1:5 to 2:52, plus the genealogy in Luke 3:23-38).
In other words, I’m talking about the Christmas story.
I just want to emphasize that I’m not trying to undermine the mystery of the Christmas story, which is very important to our understanding of how to be in relationship with God. You asked in your OP about the historical basis for Jesus’ “lost years”, and I’m just pointing out we don’t really have an historical basis for anything in Jesus’ early life. (Unless you want to get into the whole James Ossuary/Talpiot Tomb controversy, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking here.)
Maybe we do have be we(you and me )are unaware of?
Maybe we dont. Interesting conclusiom there. I might do a thread about whether there are historical records on the slaying of the infants(although very few people answer these questionsof mine anyway). Thanks for the response!!
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Sure. There’s nothing from Jesus that shows exposure to religious ideas from India or Persia or Egypt – or at least nothing that shows acceptance of ideas from other religions (because it’s possible Jesus examined other ideas and then rejected them).
We know that Jesus examined the doctrines of Second Temple Judaism and then decided to branch out in a new direction by abandoning Jewish doctrines of ritual impurity and moral impurity. This is strongly evident in Mark, but the waters are muddied in Matthew 5:17-20 with the whole “fulfilling the law, not abolishing it” speech, which directly contradicts Mark 7.
To say that the only difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was rejection of ritual impurity doctrines is to completely understate the central role of both ritual impurity and moral impurity in Jewish religious law and tradition. Every ancient religion had moral codes and legal codes to guide people towards behaviours that would encourage communal prosperity and peace. Neither Judaism nor Yeshuan Christianity were any different in this regard, so we would be troubled indeed if Jesus hadn’t built upon the best of Judaism’s moral teachings. (And there were many such positive moral teachings in Judaism.)
But to imply that Jesus’ overturning of centuries’ worth of laws and customs related to cleanliness and uncleanliness was no biggie is to miss the point of Jesus’ Kingdom teachings altogether – and to miss the point of Second Temple Jewish written law and oral law.
Do you think Jesus was contradicting thw Old Testament law?
I think Jesus was taking the best aspects of Jewish teachings (some of which were quite old by the first century but got lost in the shuffle, so to speak) and building on them. There are many contradictory claims about God in the Jewish scriptures, and there are also several different covenants. But Jesus is quite clear in the Gospel of Mark and in his parables about who he thinks God is and how we should be in relationship with God. Jesus’ understanding of God can be seen in some Jewish texts (e.g. Book of Job, certain Psalms, parts of Proverbs, Book of Jonah) but not all Jewish texts. Jesus’ understanding of God aligned with a longstanding minority view of God that can be traced back to historical aspects of Judaism, such as the Covenant Code in Exodus 20:22-23:19.
So Jesus was contradicting some aspects of Jewish law while preserving and building upon other aspects that spoke of One God who patiently loves all of us as Creator, Redeemer, Healer, Parent.
This is my view, of course, so feel free to ignore me!
P.S. I should add that if you want to see an example of a Jewish sect that took the traditional writings and oral traditions of Judaism and turned them into something very different from Pharisaic and then Rabbinic Judaism, you can look at the sectarian writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which are about as far from Jesus’ teachings as you can get. So the traditions of Judaism went in many different directions from earlier roots. Jesus wasn’t the only one who diverged enough from earlier sources to be legitimately considered the founder of a new school of religious thought.
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You are reading too too too too too too much into my post!!! The FACTS are that I ONLY said it was the only difference NOT that the difference wasn’t important!
This was ENTIRELY in the context of the whole lost years going to Hinduism thing. In a different context I would be making much of that difference – saying how Jesus made it CRYSTAL clear that God had NO PROBLEM whatsoever dealing with sinners. I am constantly doing that elsewhere in order to shoot down that whole strange puritanical aspect of some protestant theology. I UTTERLY reject that notion God has a hard time forgiving sin and needs some special song and dance (and divine human sacrifice) in order to do so.
The primary difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was Jesus knew He was the Messiah, and they did not recognize Him as such.
Well, there’s another thing you and I agree on.
My response to what you said above was based entirely on what you actually said (maybe not what you meant, but definitely what you said):
Maybe you didn’t mean to imply that the differences aren’t important, but the way you wrote it made it sound as if you’re minimizing the differences (“the teachings of Jesus were almost completely the same . . .”) But this is always the problem when people are posting with words and managing to leave out important thoughts that they’re thinking but not necessarily typing. Sheesh. 
If you meant to say only that the “whole lost years in India” thing is a silly notion, then yeah, I agree with you. And I already said so.
God bless.
My posts are already pretty long because I do try to anticipate the ways in which people can take something the wrong way. But if I really made sure to anticipate EVERY way in which people can take something the wrong way then my posts would have no end at all.
One way to handle this is when you want to make sure some angle is covered, then make it a clarification rather than a correction – that way you do not read anything into a post which simply is not there.
For me i always struggle with the covenant Israel and God made with them over a certain period of time. In the OT we see a very strict covenant with strict rules and even death penalties. And from the other we see a covenant of less rules and more "love"focused one. Do you have any personal views on that matter? Im interesting . Thanks
Something that isn’t always clear when scripture is read out of context during church services or is quoted in theological commentaries is the fact that the Bible contains many different covenants and none of them say exactly the same thing. There are covenants with Noah, and covenants with Abraham, and covenants with David and his lineage, and covenants with Moses, not to mention assorted covenants with prophets. So the concept of binding promises or covenants between God and God’s people is a central theme in Jewish scripture. But there’s no one single covenant with details that are consistent throughout all the books of the Bible.
But I sense you may be more concerned about the aspect of “blessings and curses” that attaches to most Jewish covenants, especially the Mosaic covenants in Deuteronomy. Some of the prophesied curses for human disobedience are really quite terrifying.
If you’re worried that maybe Jesus’ promises about God still include the traditional “blessings and curses,” I might recommend that you sit down with your Bible and read chapters 6 to 8 in the Gospel of Mark. (I refer to these chapters as The Parable of the Idol Bread because of all the Jewish purity laws that are broken.) During the two miraculous feedings, everyone is fed and no one is excluded (and you can be darned sure there were a bunch of sinners sitting there who got fed despite their human imperfections). The miraculous feasts were, in essence, “blessings without curses.”
But Jesus is equally clear in Mark 7 that each individual has a personal responsibility to pay attention to the inner thoughts and feelings that all of us have. So God’s blessings don’t get you off the hook when it comes to immoral choices. You still have to open your eyes and ears to God’s message. You still have to keep trying to make moral choices to show God your gratitude for God’s continuing blessings.
There’s a lot of additional meaning that can be found in this section of Mark, but the basic idea is that you don’t have to be perfect or pure to receive God’s blessings. You just have to “soften” your hardened heart to realize you’re worthy of God’s Love.
This is how I see it, anyway.
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Yes.
As clarification…
When Jesus said you must be perfect even as your Heavenly Father is perfect, this is not about some puritanical attitude of God that He cannot love anyone with any kind of sin. Rather this is because sin is self-destructive by nature and thus until all of this is removed then it will remain as a poison preventing any place from being described as heaven, paradise, or the kingdom of God. We may not be able to remove them ourselves but we must be ready to give them up when God provides the means to remove them.
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@NickolaosPappas, these are two different kinds of covenants. In the OT covenant you join the Kingdom of Israel. In the NT covenant you become part of the Body of Christ, indeed a part of Jesus doing God’s work on earth.
The OT covenant is usually a legalistic form of faith, Often Christianity can be a legalistic form of faith, that is based on keeping the rules and values of the church. Real Christianity is trusting in Jesus and living in a love relationship with Jesus and other people and oneself…
We must make a basic choice between our will and Jesus. If we put Jesus first, then we will love Him fully and He can come into our hearts with the Holy Spirit, which will enable us to do God’s Will. If not we are fooling ourselves,
Why those strict rules though? Christ didnt demand any of it
These are the laws of a country. They needed to cover all aspects of life. Also they did not have prisons. I expect that the judges exercised much mercy, but they also required severe sentences where needed. Jesus did not exercise secular power. The Jews had only religious law.